Likelihood of Success

There’ll always be an — oh, never mind

Mar 28, 2007 Orient, Stragety

Guido Fawkes at Dodgeblogium points out that — absent a humiliating (but, given Blair’s chits with GWB, very likely) military bail-out by the U.S. Navy, the once-dominant Royal Navy does not have much to threaten Iran with (I’ve added a link):

Blair can bluster and posture all he likes, the Iranians will strip our boats (they never ever returned the last lot they seized equally illegally!), beat up our seamen and their RM colleagues and then, after parading them with sham “confessions” on Arab TV, will send them home ignominiously. And Blair and his coterie of luvvies will do exactly nothing about it at all.

What is more, with our fleet reduced to a squadron, and with no strike aircraft and no carriers to call on for air support (shades of the Japanese invasion of Malaya in 1941 and the sinking of HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse!), there is not even the capacity to strengthen our presence in the Shatt al Arap. So much for the infamous Civil Service canard that a single ship is more powerful than an entire fleet. Even the World War 1 Grand Fleet would have had more capacity to intervene against these bandits than the single ship deployed in this disputed waterway – no matter how modern or powerful her weapons are, they are useless if they cannot be fired to annihiliate the enemy. Even the now antiquated guns of HMS Belfast would have been able to lay down a barrage in support of the boats that would have given the Iranians pause for thought, so imagine what several of her class would have been able to offer – including extra boats, arms and men to intervene whenever the Iranians tried a raid. War cannot be fought from the Cabinet Office or Cabinet Room in Whitehall, it has to be left to the man on the ground – and he has to have complete freedom of action in all situations!

Okay, I can’t necessarily sign on to “complete freedom of action in all situations” — but this is just awful for England and, as you can infer from Ian’s remarks, was completely predictable. (What could I have been thinking when I said it could be otherwise?)

It’s also the stickiest of wickets for Tony Blair who is, remember, a liberal who nonetheless went into that dirty bathtub at the side of the U.S. precisely on the premise that England is a major, if second-rank, power that has national interests in that region and can and should do something about them. It cost him a huge chunk of his popular support — which is actually fine and noble; leaders should be prepared to spend political capital to do the right thing for their countries — but now, on the eve of his own “Okay, that’s just about enough leadership” withdrawal — this.

Now what? Can Blair possibly use force (assuming Ian is overstating the dearth of strategic options) when he has no support at all to be there in the first place? Can he not use force and just reinforce the claim that England would only end up weakening, not strengthening, its global position by virtue of engagement in the Mideast? And then, of course, Ian’s point — what force? George Bush’s force? How humiliating and how absolutely politically bitter for Blair, who deserves better, at least morally.

UPDATE: Cap’n Ed puts it in stark terms.